The girl in the woods

Since I'm not productive workwise for a while I started, finally, writing again!

I decieded to do it pulp-style, with no preconception, a minmum of planning. Michael Moorcock wrote some of the best stuff I've read, novels, in less than a week, so if he can I can. I amazed myself with my speed, so far I guess I have 45 or so odd pages (the aim is somewhere between 150 and 200), and they are not bad at all as far as I am concerned!

I am, of course, not the right person to decide this, so I try to portion it out to one friend and my wife, but as always it is hard to get people to read on demand. Anxiously I await their response, and somehow I seem to be unable to continue before I get their critique. What an odd thing that is...

The story is set in the imaginary world of Irea, or a seriously revised version thereof. This is a world I have been creating on and off since the mid 80s, and it has gone through a lot of different stages, some more juvenile than others, no doubt. This particular version revolves around a great empire on the verge of destruction. I am interested in the lack of insight the people living in such empires have when it comes to the state of their world.

The Romans, for instance, never thought that their empire would fall, the Byzantines thought of themselves largly as the rulers of the world, and oddly enough as Romans, for a long time. Todays historians write the death of the empire long before any of the people living in it, and people not living in it but jelously watching it from the outside ever thought it possible that it would fall.

I wonder what great empires there are today that are on the verge of destruction...